The present invention relates to an ion implant chamber for an ion implantation system employed in manufacturing semiconductor devices.
As the demand for semiconductor devices is increased, it becomes very important to effectively implant ions into semiconductor wafers which are used to make the semiconductor devices. Accordingly, various kinds of ion implantation systems are now being developed which are high in productivity and in ion implantation accuracy. For example, a great number of wafers are mounted on a rotating disc at the circumference of a circle thereon, and an ion beam is scanned over the disc in order to implant ions into the wafers. Alternatively, a rotating disc, which is provided with a large number of wafers at the circumference of a circle on the disc, is rotated and simultaneously traversed in the direction of a diameter of the disc, without moving an ion beam incident upon the disc (see U.S. Pat. No. 3,778,626).
The ion implant chambers included in the conventional ion implantation systems have a drawback that it is not easy to load new wafers on the rotating disc and unload wafers ion-implanted from the rotating disc, that is, to handle the wafers.
Further, in a case where the rotating disc is rotated and traversed simultaneously, the conventional ion implant chamber becomes large-sized because a mechanism for traversing the rotating disc is complicated.
Furthermore, the conventional ion implant chamber in which the rotating disc is rotated and traversed simultaneously, cannot cool the wafers loaded on the rotating disc because of the above-mentioned complicated mechanism.